


it's thinking of stabbing us to death

by theviolonist



Category: Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Character Death, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-06
Updated: 2013-05-06
Packaged: 2017-12-10 15:05:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/787391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theviolonist/pseuds/theviolonist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One should not mistake Elijah and Katerina's story for a 21st century romance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	it's thinking of stabbing us to death

i.

One should not mistake Elijah and Katerina's story for a 21st century romance.

It isn't. They belong to darker times where knights set sail to hunt dragons, heart pumping with naïve hope, only to find a myriad of monsters ready to dazzle them out of thinking about princesses. 

He rarely misses those times, not because it wasn't good – it was – but because he makes it a point of honor to never miss something that isn't coming back. Maybe that's where his mistake lies, with Katerina. 

Still, he doesn't give up. He loves her like a plan doomed to fail. 

-

The first time he meets her the way she startles when he says her name, Katerina, makes him wonder if he's the only one to say it like something else than an insult.

She's dirty, hardly more than a peasant girl, her sharp features emerging from under the grime of travel. She steps off her carriage with heavy steps - Klaus can probably hear her from his quarters, but whether he does or not, he doesn't come down to greet her. Elijah goes without malice, out of politeness. 

But he finds Katerina Petrova, and it's the beginning of the end, when he says "Welcome" and she says "Thank you" like no one ever welcomed her anywhere before. 

-

There were gardens. There were games, she was human, he wasn't, those times he blurred almost deliberately, because vampires can't forget. Her blood was a lullaby, something crystalline and precious, and he received every one of her words like a blessing, a chance to atone for his immortality. 

And - he doesn't tell her that, never - he really did believe he could save her, until the very last minute. It hammered against his ribcage. _Save Katerina, save Katerina. If you don't do anything else, do that. Save Katerina._

But he didn't. That's their story, isn't it? He didn't save Katerina Petrova. 

-

Elijah's brother is a monster. He wasn't always like that, but people started dying and Klaus drank blood and then he was a monster. It was rather clean-cut, not a drawn-out process but a lightning transformation. Elijah watched. That's what he does. As for him, he didn't change all that much. He started wearing bespoke suits and he learned to wait. He decided to never be startled or afraid again. 

Elijah's brother is a monster, and Katerina Petrova was his betrothed, not a special girl, just another victim fed to his capricious temper. Klaus told Elijah once, in confidence, that he didn't find her all that pretty -- but it didn't matter, since she was just a sacrifice so that Klaus could be - could be what? More powerful? A greater man - creature?

So Elijah watches her. She travelled all the way from Bulgaria, her vowels still rough in her mouth, inexpert except when she says her own name, and teaches him; she's kind and soft, with big eyes and she's playful, she stands next to him in the sun and almost reminds him what the sunlight feels like on his skin. 

"Is there something wrong with your brother?" she asks, her voice low. 

Elijah doesn't bite his lip. He doesn't look down, he doesn't betray himself, he's too old for that, it's a rookie mistake. Instead he looks her in the eye, he takes her hand in his and he says, "Why are you asking, Miss Petrova? Of course there isn't, though I agree Niklaus can be a little... extreme."

As though summoned by his own name, Klaus appears on the corner of a hedge, sloppy and triumphant, doused in blood from the collarbones up. Katerina bows, "My liege," but as she draws up she sneaks a glance to Elijah and he can feel the words brushing his skin. _That's not extreme. That's insane. That's monstrous._

 

ii. 

"This is a truce," he says before she can run, handing her a glass of champagne.

She sizes him up, weighing all the things he's been to what he is now, a beast hidden in gentleman's clothing. "Fine," she says.

His hand slides over the table, not to cover hers but only to connect their fingertips, as if love for a monster were something you could transmit by touch, a sort of contagious disease. 

"You've changed," he says.

She tilts her head, considers him. For the first time of his life since she craved something other than sweet peas he feels self-conscious about his appearance, the red dahlia at his _bouttonière_. 

"You haven't," is what she decides on. He doesn't know if that's something else he should be sorry for. 

When he finally talks to her it's where they belong – in the whodunit dark of an alley, where only the moonlit angles of her face emerge, fierce. "I found you first," he says. 

"I don't belong to you," she says back, the darkness forcing her voice down to a whisper. "Or to Klaus, for that matter."

His thumb steals a carress over the plush of her cheek. "I know."

The answer seems to confound her; she flounders. 

"Good night, Katerina," he says. 

It's been a long time since he wished for human slowness – still, that night, he finds himself wanting to know if the hand she reached was to touch him or to make sure he was gone. 

-

There is still the overwhelming urge to protect her, when he sees her face crop up in the countries she breezes through in her flight. Sometimes he wishes he had the courage to go to her, slip his arms around her waist and say, soothing, "You can stop running now." He wishes he could mean it. 

But Klaus will never stop hunting her, not now that his pride was wounded, and there's nothing Elijah can do, because as strong as his love for her is, his love for his family is stronger. _Always and forever._ No, he corrects himself – it isn't love, it's obligation, it's twisted and dark; it's a root that will never be torn out. It's a gangrene. 

But maybe that's what love is. Maybe he's the naïve one, after all. 

-

Because she isn't a frail princess, or so he comes to realize – she never was. He finds her on a street corner in Firenze, where she definitely shouldn't be but is anyway. He watches as she lures a leather-jacketed young man right into her arms and sinks her teeth into his neck, drinking with long, drawn-out breaths. 

He watches for as long as he can before stepping out of the shadows, towards her. She wipes the blood from her mouth with the back of her hand, and for the first time since she's appeared he notices that she doesn't look lost, that she doesn't look confused. 

"Katerina," he croaks out, his tongue accented with the heavy Bulgarian he stole from her. 

She smiles. "Elijah."

He searched for her for a long time, intent on dragging her back to his brother with chained hands, screaming. He wanted to break her fangs and her neck. He wanted to destroy her.

But she doesn't care. She's Katerina Petrova, he understands. She's fearless. 

She strides forward in the Italian night, and she kisses him. He had never imagined kissing her back like that: like sharing a meal, like burning, like being human again. 

She licks her lips afterwards, red from so much more than blood. "I've wanted to do that for a long time," she says, her eyes impenetrable, neither cold nor sweet.

-

He holds her breath under a blade.

"You won't kill me," she says. 

"No. But I can make you pay."

And maybe he's forgotten what, exactly, he's supposed to make her pay for this time. Maybe she's the only one of them who keeps track, because he keeps taking all those quests for immortal revenge as a way to get her close, to see her profile the moment before he jumps, her lips heaving with contained breath.

She looks at him, the jar of a thousand stories, diffracted, divided and yet truer than anyone he ever met. "You love me," she says like a surprise gift. 

"Yes," he answers as the blade descends, and it drowns in her screams. 

 

iii. 

"Katerina," he murmurs in the dark thickness of her hair, "are you going to escape forever?"

Her laughter is bitter. "It's the only thing I'm good at."

He doesn't argue, doesn't ask her to stay. He wouldn't be able to keep his love for her contained, and it's the kind of love that burns cities, ransacks homes and pillages treasures.

When she turns around to face him her skin is smooth, smells almost sickly sweet. "Did you really intend to save me?"

They both know there's no use talking about the past, and yet she asks. Sometimes he thinks it's one of their curses, having to lug around their regrets for eternity, a punishment more cruel than the lust for human blood.

He tightens his arms around her. He used to want to kill her once, and this instinct isn't much different, pounds just as strongly in his undead heart. "I don't know," he murmurs. "I guess we never will."

-

"You wear it well."

She chuckles coquettishly, her hands rising to the diamonds around her neck. "Thank you," she says. 

"I didn't mean the diamonds. I meant the century."

Her brows furrow, the comment sobers her up – as though she'd forgotten for a second that she was more than human, a creature. That, too, she wears well. 

"It's not too hard," she says. "Once you've mastered the cellphone and the art of trashy clothing, you've got it under your belt."

He can't kiss her without his fingers in her hair, and her nails digging into the small of his back; without trying to touch all of her there is to touch, trying to consume her, trying to eat her up so she won't wake up in the morning and go and break his heart like she has to, because their story is set in stone. 

But he doesn't resist when she says, "Come here," in a growl. He's nothing in front of Katerina.

-

Klaus told him once, on a day where he was terrible, blood dripping on his chin, "Love will be the death of you, Elijah. Love is the death of everyone."

And Elijah heard what he was saying: look at me, I'm not dead – because it's always like that with Klaus, it's always about him; and he surprised himself by thinking, maybe I want to die. He was never given the choice, after all. 

But he'll figure it out, and if love kills him, well – he could have chosen a worse way to go.

 

iv.

In the end it doesn't kill him. It doesn't kill her, either. But something else does. 

He's there when it happens. Klaus is talking to her, making a deal or another, and she's standing in front of him, not afraid but coiled – ready to spring should the need present itself, sneaking glances at him from underneath her eyelashes. And Elijah thinks, _maybe_ –

But then a blade comes out of nowhere, not even special or beautiful, a common wooden dagger, and Elijah watches as it tears the skin of her throat – the blood leaps out like it couldn't wait to get out, a geyser – Elijah jumps forward, not trying to understand what is happening, just the primal urge – she clutches her hands to her throat – 

And a second blow, this time to the heart, of course, the dagger stuck in one swift movement of the wrist, and Katerina falls backwards, gasping, her hands already shriveled, her eyes – 

"Huh," says Klaus, grinning like the careless monster he is, "I didn't think that would work."

Elijah kneels. 

-

Klaus tries to get him to leave her body, but it's enough that he knows he will eventually; he leaves to better purchases, his lip curling, as though Elijah were being ungrateful. 

"Believe me, brother," he says as he leaves the room, "I've done you a favor," and Elijah wonders, How on earth can he think he's capable of love? 

He bends his head, his forehead touching Katerina's. There are so many things to say and so little time to say them. Even death – death more than anything – is restless. 

"This is the second time I've killed you, Katerina," he says then, instead of a gentle word, instead of an apology. 

-

He buries her that same night, alone. She doesn't need a burial, would probably have been happy burning in a boat, drifting ablaze on the smooth black surface of a silent lake – he's the one who needs it. The humans call it closure, but of course he knows better. 

As the ground swallows her he looks into her eyes, still open, fixing him in accusation. It seems to him that they're saying, _I will haunt you forever_ ; somehow it's a small relief.


End file.
